Boot, meet other foot.
Those of us old enough to recall disco and roll-on, cherry-flavoured lip gloss with a fond smile will also remember, if we were paying attention, the justified outrage of the western intelligentsia when the writings of imprisoned Russian dissidents Solzhenitzyn and Irina Ratushinskaya were published in the West. Their works were hailed on all sides as the triumph of human spirit over torturous repression.
But while I don’t doubt the sincere horror at what was revealed as having been going on behind the Iron Curtain that the commentators of the day displayed I also don’t doubt that many felt a secret relief that it was happening somewhere else, to someone else, safely away from sight.
If you’d told the Dacron-suited, muletted and sideburned disapprovalists of 30-odd years ago that one day there’d be US government-run gulags and torture chambers right in their faces, in their own backyards, they’d’ve been so disgusted and they’ve had you run out of town for even suggesting it. “That’s evil Commie stuff, we’re the Good Guys!”
But where’s their outrage now, when here we are with the first publication of a book of poetry written by Guantanamo Bay detainees?
[Courtesy Rippen Kitten]
From The Wasteland: The Death Poem by Jumah al-Dossari
“Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.
Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.
And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden, before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the “protectors of peace.“
A-Dossari wrote this poem in Guantanamo Bay where he was tortured by US agents and military.
Rippen Kitten again:
This is Juma Al Dossari. Mr. Al Dossari is a Bahraini national. He is 33 years old and is currently held in the American prison for security detainees, Camp Delta, at the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay. He has been imprisoned for over five years now due to an outdated FBI report which stated concerns that he might have “ties” to the so-called Lackawanna Six. Defense counsel for Mr. Al Dossari have steadfastly denied any knowledge at all on. Mr. Al Dossari’s part.
The Buffalo Six (also known as Lackawanna Six, Lakawanna Cell, or Buffalo Cell) is a group of six Yemeni-Americans who were convicted of providing material support to al-Qaeda. The six are American citizens by birth.
By all accounts I’ve found, Mr. Al Dossari has never provided a shred of evidence of intelligence to the United States. He’s not even considered an “intelligence target,” let alone a high value target.
But the question must be asked. What has the U.S. given Mr. Al Dossari in the past five years? And of course the answer to that is torture. Mr. Al Dossari has suffered severe beatings, been burned with cigarettes, been made to walk on barbed wire, shackled, put in stress positions, held in isolation and more. These aren’t allegations of torture. There is documentation by videotape and in the form of witness statements. A letter written Mr. Al Dossari corroborates detail:
*Nine suicide attempts.
*Three hunger strikes.
*Sexual tortureUntil very recently, I had never heard his name. Anyone else? I will remember Mr. Al Dossari and I hope that you will, too.
So many names, like Bishr Al-Rawi, the Iraqi-born British resident released from Gitmo this week:
…Al-Rawi was arrested for carrying electronic equipment which was deemed to be “suspicious” by British police at Gatwick airport who tipped off the CIA who were waiting for him in Gambia 2002. The device turned out to be a battery charger.
Even as short a time as 10 years ago what happened to Al-Rawi and Al-Dossari would have been international news, a scandal in giant caps on every front page of every newspaper in the world. “US Tortures the Innocent!”. Now? Iit barely merits a squib at the bottom of an inside page of a downmarket tabloid. “US Tortures The Innocent, Ho-Hum”.
But despite the public’s boredom with Gitmo and desensitisation to torture nevetheless the forgotten persist in dreaming of freedom.
Just as the heart beats in the darkness of the body,
so I, despite this cage, continue to beat with life.
Those who have no courage or honor consider themselves free,
but they are slaves.
I am flying on the wings of thought, and so,
even in this cage, I know a greater freedom.Written – well, actually scratched onto a styrofoam cup using his fingernails, by Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost. Mr. Dost is an Afghani national who was released from Guantánamo in April 2006, after three years of illegal imprisonment.
I cannot begin to imagine what the people in Gitmo and detained elsewhere as enemy combatants, many of them children, have suffered and are suffering. It’s continually astonishing that the human spirit persists despite such injustice as this, yet it does.
[*Unless they drive you mad, that is.]
